4th, 5th, 6th Person Perspective

[chenda]

It's notable I think that most geniuses are men. Whilst average IQ is the same across genders, high IQ outliers are overwhelmingly male. This is likely due to the much higher rates of autism in males. Autism is found throughout the IQ spectrum, but most geniuses are on the spectrum. This may be why the human race has been so successful. 99% of people designed to breed, with a few hyper-rational males who develop obsessive interests out of which the occasional genius emerges.

[guitarplayer]

This is a clever way to say women are generally smarter then men

[karff]

There is some research to back this up including the possible relation to mirror neurons. However, Kegan's structure is not based on emotional empathy; rather it is constructed around the idea of seeing humans (the self and others) and their interactions in terms of subjects and objects in increasingly integrated ways. In that sense Kegan is closer to the concept of "compassionate empathy"

I was thinking somewhat along these lines.
When you behave a certain way, and someone reacts emotionally, your mirror neurons pick that up. Thus, the events of your behavior and their reaction (basically, the outward evidence of their perception of your behavior) gets integrated as a single concept. Long feedback loops of this get integrated into a concept of a “relationship”.

Here’s why I was interested in the other side of the dif/int cycle. The relationship concept is now differentiated from the rest of the world (but still attached to the subjects). You can now identify the features of a relationship in other people - If you see two other people interacting - they are seen as “relating”. I was thinking of mirror neurons as the specific mechanical means by which the features of a relationship are differentiated from the world, and integrated as a single concept, allowing you to perceive others perceiving others as percievers.

Wilber also suggests that at the Integral Level, a balance between Level Orange/Modern tendency to promote universal freedom through equality of opportunity and Level Green/Post-Modern tendency to promote universal care through equality of outcome will be sought. Ergo, it may follow that either a deficiency or a surfeit of mirror neurons may contribute to inability to fully inhabit Integral Level of development.

After looking over just a synopsis of the difference in Kohlberg and Gilligan, it seems that men might be interested in an “ethics of maximizing/minimizing”, while women an “ethics of equilibrium”. While cognitive studies show no big difference in male/female ability to pay attention to multiple things at once (contrary to conventional belief), I think women have an inclination toward it. In development, inclination can be more important than ability.

[Frita]

After looking over just a synopsis of the difference in Kohlberg and Gilligan, it seems that men might be interested in an “ethics of maximizing/minimizing”, while women an “ethics of equilibrium”.

Age, not gender, is the strongest predictor of dichotomous thinking. While it can be useful to make decisions, there are other challenges, like aggression, impulsivity, lack of perspective taking, etc. As we age, there is the opportunity to see more nuance, personally and in the world. Perhaps from an evolutionary standpoint, men had roles that benefited from that lense and women didn’t.

This is likely due to the much higher rates of autism in males.

Yes and higher rates of ADHD, addiction, and learning/communication disabilities are found in males. While neurodivergence has many advantages, social-emotional development lags plus anxiety and depression are huge challenges. Despite patriarchy, modern society is a bear for many men.

[7Wannabe5]

It's notable I think that most geniuses are men.

Yes, and also most "imbeciles." This may be at times expressed as something that resembles autism, but I once read that it is likely due to fact that some components of intelligence are found on the X sex chromosome, and this results in male humans having IQs that are better correlated with mother than father, and also increases the variance of the distribution for males. However, the mechanism by which having two X chromosomes would result in more of a reversion to sturdy mean seems a bit dubious. OTOH, as guitarplayer implied, this could also explain why when cultural barrier of sexism is removed, more females succeed at attaining bachelor degree than males; more females than males would have intelligence in the "above average" range. Y chromosome "fragility" also contributes to greater male mortality at earliest stages of human fetal/infantile development. So, the occasional male genius may just be happenstance to the evolutionary benefit of overall greater, more sturdy, female fitness.

I was thinking of mirror neurons as the specific mechanical means by which the features of a relationship are differentiated from the world, and integrated as a single concept, allowing you to perceive others perceiving others as percievers.

In marital or family therapy, the difference between emotionally "reacting" and empathetic/self-other aware "responding" is often emphasized. A "response" being more differentiated than a "reaction", because a behavioral decision and/or a level of abstraction is interwoven. "Waaaah!", "I am ANGRY!", "You make me angry!", "Your behavior makes me feel the emotion of anger." , "I am allowing myself to feel anger in response to your behavior.", "I am observing the feeling of anger arising within my emotional core as you exhibit this behavior." The greater the level of "differentiation" you possess, the better you are able to "hold on to yourself" while in the presence of other(s.) OTOH, a high level of "integration" demands that you actually do give a fuck, care about your relationship and/or the situation at hand. IOW, "differentiation" is not "disassociation" or even "keeping it chill." For example, the fact that it is generally easier to "respond" rather than "react" in relationship with a casual acquaintance than in relationship with your lover, does not imply that "differentiation" is akin to keeping all your relationships at the emotional depth/tone/importance level of "casual acquaintance."

One path or hierarchy might go Data-> Information->Knowledge-> Wisdom, and another path or hierarchy might go Emotion-> Feeling-> Compassion/Empathy-> Wisdom. And something akin to Intuition or Intelligence is likely leading you forward on either/both paths. My experience tutoring math to those who have actually been clearly diagnosed with significant autism is that they can be extremely high functioning at the level of Information, such as running through a mathematical algorithm*, while also exhibiting extreme emotional reactivity and/or flatness. So, for example, those with significant autism are unable to detect "irony" which is a concept that exists around the juncture of "knowledge" and "empathy."

*The typical sort of comment an autistic high school math student might make to me during a tutoring session would be a blunt "No. That is not how you do it." if/when I was approaching the problem from a different angle than he had previously encountered. And this would be in sharp contrast to how another sort of student, maybe a more typical junior high school aged girl, possessing much less mathematical information/structure, but much higher level of emotional/social intelligence, might attempt to conversationallly charm me out of making her do another page of problems.

[black_son_of_gray]

@karff @jacob

Reading through your replies to each other, my first thought is to ask: "Okay, but what about blind people?"

For various ethical reasons, one of the main avenues of investigation in neuroscience (in humans) is to look at "loss of function" models such as genetic/developmental/congenital deficits, or ablation/injury case studies. Rarely, a surgeon might have the ability to temporarily root around in the brain while addressing another issue. Humans are primarily visual by neural real estate, but there are a number of ways in which people can be blind...and naturally questions arise as to how well/differently these individuals process/recognize emotion in others. Any decent overarching theory is going to need to address that.

Y'all might find this article re: unconscious emotional recognition in those with 'blindsight' interesting (if nothing else, as a source of adjacent/related topics).

[chenda]

Apparently blind people care about looks in attraction just as much as sighted people.

[karff]

In marital or family therapy, the difference between emotionally "reacting" and empathetic/self-other aware "responding" is often emphasized. A "response" being more differentiated than a "reaction", because a behavioral decision and/or a level of abstraction is interwoven. "Waaaah!", "I am ANGRY!", "You make me angry!", "Your behavior makes me feel the emotion of anger." , "I am allowing myself to feel anger in response to your behavior.", "I am observing the feeling of anger arising within my emotional core as you exhibit this behavior." The greater the level of "differentiation" you possess, the better you are able to "hold on to yourself" while in the presence of other(s.) OTOH, a high level of "integration" demands that you actually do give a fuck, care about your relationship and/or the situation at hand. IOW, "differentiation" is not "disassociation" or even "keeping it chill." For example, the fact that it is generally easier to "respond" rather than "react" in relationship with a casual acquaintance than in relationship with your lover, does not imply that "differentiation" is akin to keeping all your relationships at the emotional depth/tone/importance level of "casual acquaintance."

I was thinking more in terms of immediate concept formation rather than the therapy kind of diff/int. If you glance at a bowl of fruit, and you’ve never seen oranges before, the mind (or, really, on the brain/neuronal level) integrates the features of an orange, and differentiates them from apples in fractions of a second.

With mirror neurons, you can tell whether you are “relating” or not by whether your mirror neurons are firing. On the scale of fractions of a second. So, the emotional features of a relationship are differentiated from other emotional reactions (like being afraid of a spooky noise, or experiencing joy at the sight of a flower). The features are integrated into a single concept of “relationship”.

If you have functioning mirror neurons, you can easily tell if you are relating or not. Easy peasy. Without them, differentiating relating from nonrelating is a complex logic puzzle. This does not imply that a relater is any more mature or “differentiated”/ “integrated” on the family therapy level. The tool of mirror neurons just makes it easier.

@karff @jacob

Reading through your replies to each other, my first thought is to ask: "Okay, but what about blind people?"

I’d guess that tone of voice triggers mirror neurons. (It does in me).

[black_son_of_gray]

I’d guess that tone of voice triggers mirror neurons. (It does in me).

Right, so the reason I brought up the blindness is because mirror neurons are, by definition, related to observation.

Mirror Neuron Basics
Mirror neurons were discovered by chance in monkeys in 1992 and given their evocative name 4 years later (di Pellegrino et al., 1992; Gallese et al., 1996). Early studies of the field properties of mirror neurons—the sensory and motoric conditions in which they fire—revealed three basic types. Strictly congruent mirror neurons discharge during execution and observation of the same action, for example, when the monkey performs a precision grip and when it passively observes a precision grip performed by another agent. Broadly congruent mirror neurons are typically active during the execution of one action (e.g., precision grip) and during the observation of one or more similar, but not identical, actions (e.g., power grip alone, or precision grip, power grip, and grasping with the mouth). Logically related mirror neurons respond to different actions in observe and execute conditions. For example, they fire during the observation of an experimenter placing food in front of the monkey and when the monkey grasps the food to eat it (di Pellegrino et al., 1992). Strictly and broadly congruent mirror neurons were, from the beginning, of primary interest, and they are what we and most other researchers mean when we use the term “mirror neuron.” These cells are intriguing because, like a mirror, they match observed and executed actions; they code both “my action” and “your action.”

From a recent review article on the topic. (bold emphasis mine).

With mirror neurons, you can tell whether you are “relating” or not by whether your mirror neurons are firing. On the scale of fractions of a second. So, the emotional features of a relationship are differentiated from other emotional reactions (like being afraid of a spooky noise, or experiencing joy at the sight of a flower). The features are integrated into a single concept of “relationship”.

If you have functioning mirror neurons, you can easily tell if you are relating or not. Easy peasy. Without them, differentiating relating from nonrelating is a complex logic puzzle. This does not imply that a relater is any more mature or “differentiated”/ “integrated” on the family therapy level. The tool of mirror neurons just makes it easier.

Wowzers! Am I missing something monumental in the research?? This kind of stuff is pretty close to my professional wheelhouse, and I have no clue what you are talking about. You might want to peruse that review article for a state-of-the-science update.

[karff]

Wowzers! Am I missing something monumental in the research?? This kind of stuff is pretty close to my professional wheelhouse, and I have no clue what you are talking about. You might want to peruse that review article for a state-of-the-science update.

I admit, I know very little about mirror neurons. I threw them out as an example for the level of mental capability I was interested in. And when everyone seemed to think I was asking for a higher level, I elaborated out the idea further down, using my (apparently mistaken) assumption that mirror neurons played a role in understanding the emotions of others.

I definitely did not start asking questions in the thread to advocate some half-baked mirror neuron theory.

With the (apparently mistaken) assumption that mirror neurons played a role in emotional processing, I assumed the reason I could feel the emotion in others' voices was because of that. Was just guessing.

But, anyway - Is there a brain function that would be helpful in determining whether you are perceiving someone perceiving, or you are perceiving someone perceiving a perciever?
Put that function in the place of “mirror neurons” in my explanation, and that’s what I’m asking about.

[jacob]

But, anyway - Is there a brain function that would be helpful in determining whether you are perceiving someone perceiving, or you are perceiving someone perceiving a perciever?
Put that function in the place of “mirror neurons” in my explanation, and that’s what I’m asking about.

You can ask the person directly. This will set off a bunch of their brain functions that will give you an answer depending on whether someone is perceiving or perceiving a perceiver. Here's a popular method that tests whether someone perceives other people's perceptions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally%E2%80%93Anne_test

Building on this idea further, it's possible to probe the depth of someone's theory of mind similarly to probing their theory of math by asking mathematical questions of increasing complexity. If I ask you what 2+2 is and you give the answer (4) that I predict you will, then our respective minds-of-math when it comes to addition, numbers, and counting comprise a complete mapping (called an injection for the the math nerds). However, suppose I ask you more complicated mathematical questions that you can't answer or vice versa, then one of us (or both of us) lack understanding/perception/perspective.

Likewise, depth of perspective can be inferred by asking people increasingly more complicated questions and evaluating the answers they give to e.g. Kohlberg's story about the Heinz dilemma. Similar depth is revealed in practice by HOW someone talks politics. Heinz dilemma just gives a very standardized method for doing it.

But perhaps, you're asking if there's something innate in all human (or mammalian, or perhaps even artificially intelligent) minds that cause this understanding in the first place (do humans innately have feelings or a sense of numbers and if so, which ones and how many constitute the basic building blocks that other ideas are founded on). This is basically an ontological question with very many different answers depending on who, when, and where you ask. For example, transcendental idealism is the idea that we can only perceive reality through our senses and only in a way that the brain has some a priori "fitting models" to understand or make sense of the sensory inputs. E.g. I perceive a soccer ball as round only because I have eyes (or hands) AND my brain has some built-in "fitting model" of what "round" is. (Does that sound weird? Then consider how many humans find art that features the golden ratio somehow extra aesthetically pleasing.) If you substitute in "instrumental measuring device" instead of the human senses and/or responses (this extension only being one step removed) you get instrumentalism/phenomenalism which is how most (if not all?) hard scientists think about the world.

Currently technology is still at a point where brains can't be read word for word. As far as I know, it's at the point where various sensing functions are mapped to various parts of the brain, e.g. instruments can tell if someone is thinking about spatial relations or historic relations but not more precise than that. So the softer sciences remain stuck with using human brains to think about other human brains---something that is greatly facilitated by being able to use language; language being its own can of worms.

Add: Regardless if whether one is using conversation or electrodes to probe, it seems to me that sooner or later one is going to run into the equivalent of the Chinese Room problem. Does someone else actually think or do they just present a simulation that is 100% indistinguishable from thinking. To me this distinction doesn't really matter because it's the same as saying that "I" am the only one in the universe thinking and the rest of you humans are just perfect at pretending to. What's the difference, anyway? Thus, in practice what matters when it comes to the ability to holds perspectives is what kind of organizing principle someone uses. How many perspectives does someone hold? Are they capable of holding more than one perspective in their mind at a time? Are they capable of reconciling different perspectives? Do they understand how perspective colors the perspective on perspective? And so on.

[karff]

Thank you, Jacob. That is more in line of what I was interested in.

Thus, in practice what matters when it comes to the ability to holds perspectives is what kind of organizing principle someone uses.

Is there a biological basis for particular organizing principles? Where the brain automatically gravitates toward organizing to/at a particular level, but no further? (Or has a particular method of organization that results in a level)

I'll be away from the internet for a week or so. Will think about the above, and be back, maybe with more questions.

[jacob]

Is there a biological basis for particular organizing principles? Where the brain automatically gravitates toward organizing to/at a particular level, but no further? (Or has a particular method of organization that results in a level)

There are some projects underway to map every single neuron in the brain. Researchers are working their way up from fruit flies but are still far away from the size of the human brain. It's a large scope project like the genome projects that also took decades.

We do know that the brain is plastic so one might expect to see a correspondence between the level of complexity of neuronal structures and the ditto for thought. The limit/preferred complexity is likely affected by neuronal transmission efficiency and mental energy usage (see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_ef ... hypothesis ) but it seems to me it would also be affected of how a given person has trained and built their brain in the first place, that is, what and how they've been thinking about things, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_ef ... complexity . Similar to muscularity, talent is required but not sufficient for advanced outcomes. It is easier to do task or perspective analysis at depth if one is practiced in doing it.

[black_son_of_gray]

But, anyway - Is there a brain function that would be helpful in determining whether you are perceiving someone perceiving, or you are perceiving someone perceiving a perciever?

You can ask the person directly. This will set off a bunch of their brain functions that will give you an answer depending on whether someone is perceiving or perceiving a perceiver.

The following isn't really useful for the OP thread topic, but maybe people will find a couple thoughts interesting:

1. What kind of information/understanding do you really care about? Or, said another way, what level of understanding will be satisfying to you? For people interested in the topic of 'how the brain works', it is worth taking the time to figure out that question ahead of time. It will save you time and reduce frustration.

Consider how a mechanic might describe how a car works: what connects to what, what does what; then consider how a typical car owner describes how a car works...("This round doohickey makes me turn, this peddle makes it go, this button turns on the radio."). In essence, some people want a user's manual, and some want the repair manual. It's fine to want either, but they are not the same. Note: there is an adjacent point here with respect to the brain, and that is the degree to which you are 'conscious'/aware of what the brain is doing. Most of what the brain is doing is 'behind the scenes'. Which is not a bad thing, really. A lot of neural processing is irrelevant to the actual experience of life in the same way that knowing what kind of tolerances are good to have on a camshaft ain't helping you with parallel parking. The tiny little sliver that gets the attentional/consciousness/awareness spotlight is basically the whole of our mental lives. We do all our driving from the driver's seat, not from under the hood.

A personal anecdote: When I was entering graduate school, I had a LOT of (naive) research interests, which resulted in me 'rotating' between labs in the first 1-2 years that studied very different 'levels' of questions (ranging from single proteins to something like 'context-dependent spatial awareness'). My problem was this: the questions I found most interesting were the high-level questions, but the answers I found most satisfying were the low-level questions. Any kind of 'perception' is a high-level question. Talking about the firing patterns of mirror neurons is a (relatively) low question. The gulf between those questions is large, and answers to one does little to inform the other. The lower you go, the better the measurements and the more the experimental control you have, and the firmer (but narrower) the conclusions you can draw. You just aren't going to get a specific, detailed, and nuanced mechanistic explanation to high-level questions. You will get fuzzier, general answers, though - something like, "well, this brain region is definitely involved in this cognitive process (but not this other, similar process--that's something different), and it communicates with these other 5 brain regions in different ways, though we aren't exactly sure what that means and why it's important yet." I ended up choosing the low-level research focus because, while it was fascinating and 'relatable' to my own life to think about the high-level questions, the kinds of answers that that kind of research provides is really frustrating to me. E.g. "So, the conclusion to your hour-long talk is that there is a region of the brain that mediates behavior X? But that....kind of had to be the case because the brain has to be involved in some way in generating any behavior..."

For the purposes of this thread and the level of questions that (I think) are being asked, cognitive psychology is way more practical (vs. cognitive neuroscience). This is why @jacob's reply above is a fine one! (And the kind of thing that can actually be applied in your own life). But that also means there will be pretty much no lower-level research explanations that will convincingly back up any answers.

2. "You just aren't going to get a specific, detailed, and nuanced mechanistic explanation to high-level questions." <- That's a bold statement, but hear me out. I cannot stress enough how insanely complicated a human brain is, and we almost always are fed grossly oversimplified explanations at every single level. Single synapses themselves are incredibly heterogeneous, and we don't fully understand them. They have different strengths, different 'signs' (e.g. excitatory vs. inhibitory, which is itself an oversimplification(!), because a single synapse could be either depending on context), different temporal properties, some act 'locally', some act 'regionally', and on and on... A single neuron may receive 10,000 or so of these inputs, which are constantly being "integrated". This integration is super not straightforward: location and strength of synapse matters, relation to other synaptic input matters, recent firing history of the neuron matters, the variable electrical properties of the neuronal membrane and its branching pattern matters (see cable theory if electrical engineering is your jam). We could go up and down the scale from here, and it will be much the same theme: a synapse uses many dozens of proteins, each of which has variants, blah blah blah. The tiniest little chunk of brain will almost certainly include many different 'types' of neurons, each with its own particular connectivity patterns and morphology, and each area might have its own 'mapping', inputs, outputs, blah blah blah. My point here is that there are some 100 billion-ish neurons in a human brain, and maybe 100 trillion-ish synapses, if I'm remembering the numbers correctly. These are galactic-level numbers, folks! It's so damn complicated it's almost poetically beautiful. ("You have a universe in your head, darling!") And while there are certainly degrees of freedom at each scale that can probably be 'collapsed' or generalized, there's also a lot that probably cannot.

There are indeed several ambitious, large-scale brainmapping projects, and it'll be really interesting to see how that all unfolds. No doubt there will be some very interesting findings, maybe some of them even useful, and I'm sure that mechanistic explanations of 'how the brain works' will no doubt be improved at a lot of levels. While a gigantic map of connections is not, by itself, enough to figure out how the whole thing works in real time, it's not a bad place to start. But I do wonder whether, as in (1), there will ever be a kind of deeply satisfying answer to the kinds of questions people love to ask. I suspect that the only deliverables will be of 'mechanic' rather than 'driver' interest. Does humanity want to sink a decent chunk of its energy usage on powering quantum computers to try to figure it all out? (Maybe! I mean look at cryptocurrencies!) Maybe there will be an answer, but it will be too confusing for a human brain to actually grasp. And yes, I realize that we've come perilously close to "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" here, so I guess it's time to stop.

@karff, apologies if my previous comments came out a little aggro (not intended). I'm not here to stomp on ideas. Rant over, carry on.

[7Wannabe5]

I cannot stress enough how insanely complicated a human brain is

Yeah, this is why I gave up on research towards DIY on the genetically-based autoimmune disease with which I am cursed. The human immune system being the second most insanely complicated/complex known object in the galaxy.

In addition to the mechanistic brain AND transcendent mind dichotomy, there is also the spectrum that runs from evolutionary neuroscience to evolutionary psychology which might be relevant to some of the questions at hand, since sex/gender is being considered as a factor. For example, I found "A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs that Made Our Brains" quite interesting and not in conflict with, for instance, Wilber's "Sex, Ecology, Spirituality." OTOH, some of the books written or Ted Talks given by some evolutionary psychologists have really lit up my biased bullshit or "Yes, but..." button. For example, I was exhibiting a bit of my tendency towards the droll in describing one male-of-my-generation-milieu researcher's "proof" that females are inherently more sexuality motivated by perception of potential partner's wealth in a post on this particular forum.

One question that occurred to me that may be somewhat related would be why I find it quite easy to match characters in novels and films with an MBTI type (or more accurately stated, it is very easy for me to assign the same MBTI type to a character that the internet consensus has assigned) , but Jacob says that task is not automatic for him? Of course, this itself may be an MBTI relatable issue (NeTi vs NiTe), or just a matter of personal interest/experience, rather than sex/gender related, because I believe that Daylen (INTP) also became quite "skilled" at this task. I understand that this "skill" does not require an additional layer of abstraction, but it might speak to karff's question regarding female vs. male orientation. I also think that this is not unrelated to the fact that although I am a human who received score of 800 on Logic section of old school GRE exam, and I am also a human who has dabbled in home repair/DIY for several decades, I still sometimes have to talk to myself when spatially manipulating a tool. There's a good deal of positive feedback in cycle of Interest to Exploration to Experience to Expertise to Intuition.

Anyways, the frequently offered likely too simple Evolutionary Psychology explanation for why females have more "social" brains is that social skills are more critical for survival for females and their offspring. This may also relate to why females are generally more likely to have the ability/tendency to run an algorithm (or three) with more variables and more sliding weight assignment (including wealth in Orange context) when choosing a mate. This is also why my eyeballs rolled back into my head when I heard evolutionary psychologist Brett Weinstein's comment in reference to polyamory, "Some men can't tell the difference between hotness and beauty." , because my response was "Yup, and a whole lotta men can ONLY tell the difference between hotness and beauty." Even super-developed genius Ken Wilber struck me as still a teensy bit on the err-on-the-side-of-visual-cortex-hardwiring-of-male-brain in his chapters on achieving ego transcendence through Tantric Sexual practice that I recently read, because he describes "pointers" to highest states of transcendence in visual terms, although I suppose this is also simply towards describing in human terms since we are so visual as a species. Still, it led me to wonder whether if to the extent that a dog is able to achieve the bliss of ego transcendence through sexuality, it would be more likely described by a Canine Sex Guru in terms of sense of smell. Also, it seems to me that if/when AI also develops to the point of achieving "ego transcendence through sexuality", the effects on humanity may closely resemble those currently associated with Peak Oil.

[karff]

Reward feedback loops.

If you think about another person thinking of you, and that's a net rewarding experience (with consideration of extrinsic reward seeking), then you repeat that, forming a positive feedback loop.
If you think of another person thinking of you, and it's net non-rewarding, you don't do it again.

[7Wannabe5]

@karff:

I read somewhere that the same part of your brain lights up when you think about other people or future you. So, the relationship(s) you are capable of having with your self(s) may also serve to illuminate. For example, in therapy situation you may consider what are your current thoughts about how distant future you will feel about distant past you if near-future you takes this path or that path? You may also be simultaneously considering what your therapist might think about your response, but it's unlikely you will be considering how your response might influence the tone of her interaction with her husband over dinner three hours later. That interaction is not within the scope of your response-ability.

The etymology of "response" is basically "pledge or promise in return." What is usually going on at Kegan3 is that emotional reactions or emotional states are too often being confused with social contracts. Any relationship exists in both a subjective state and a social "contract", which in most basic form may simply be the direct experienced behavior of the other. So, these two aspects of any relationship could also be ghost-characters within consideration. For example, "I used to feel sad when Oscar called me "Dummy", but now I feel mad." The default "contract" being "Oscar may or may not call me Dummy" now held separate from "emotional state." At Kegan 3, humans form relationships within roles, so the role may also be confused with an emotional state; "She should love me, because she is my wife."

Children comprehend the concept of "role" at a very early age, and hold this concept very close in relationship to themself. For example, "My teacher's name is Mrs. York" is an easier concept than "Mrs. York is my teacher.", because a very young child can't very well imagine Mrs. York as a free-floating individual who has a life of her own outside of their shared classroom experience." Similarly, a Dad-joke that might draw giggles or frowns from the very young would be claiming possession of "My Mommy", because the infant feels his personal possession of his Mommy much more forcefully than he can know Mommy in another role with Daddy.

IOW, I think what you are attempting to get at is too basic for humans, because we are born hard-wired as a particular sort of social animal and the variations in social response found in individuals of our species occurs at a level that is higher or more complex than simple programming. For example, it may be the case that a human infant must first form a relationship with "Mommy," before he can "make" a "friend." In fact, it has been shown that human infants will not develop normally and may likely die absent a primary social relationship.

ASLANIAN: A boy and girl rush down the path to greet a group of visitors, among them Charles Nelson, a Harvard professor who spent five years guiding research on Romania's institutionalized children.

A disabled girl who looks about seven holds out her arms for a stranger to pick her up. The translator yells not to pick her up, but it's too late. The girl doesn't cuddle or appear comforted by the contact. She holds her body rigid, as if she's clutching a tree trunk.

Nelson explains it's called indiscriminate friendliness, a common problem for kids raised in institutions.

Professor CHARLES NELSON (Harvard University): They just walk right up to you and want to be picked up. What Nicole was saying is that - not to pick up the little girl because the last time that happened, they picked her up and when they put her down she just threw herself on the ground and kept hitting her head, which is probably a way for her to deal with being rejected or something like that.

ASLANIAN: Charles Nelson studies brain deprivation, what happens when infants and young children don't get what they need from others. Romania has provided him with a natural experiment. On his laptop, Nelson shows a video - shot in 2001 - of three Romanian boys who grew up in an orphanage.

Prof. NELSON: So these are three kids who are playing. Now, looking their size, how old do you think these kids are?

ASLANIAN: Six?

Prof. NELSON: Yeah. So these kids all look to be about five or six years and they're all 15 to 20 years old. So that gives you an example of what happens long-term in the growth stunting.

ASLANIAN: Nelson explains it's not from lack of nutrition or calories. The boys got enough to eat. But their bodies didn't produce enough growth hormone. The theory is that in a stressful environment, like growing up in a place where no adult pays attention to you, the body conserves energy for brain development. But even with that conserved energy, the children's IQs were almost 40 points lower than average.

Prof. NELSON: The fact that their IQ is as low as it is, which we don't think is genetic in origin, is due to the profound intellectual deprivation that they experienced in the institution.

ASLANIAN: Nelson says early experiences, like having a loving adult talk to you, play with you and comfort you, are key to shaping the brain.

Prof. NELSON: If you're exposed to the wrong experiences or you have no experiences, such as occurs in deprivation, then the brain kind of gets mis-wired. And the concern we have from a neuroscience perspective is that if it's mis-wired early on for an extended period of time, it may be very difficult later on to rewire it.

https://www.npr.org/2006/09/16/6089477/ ... as-orphans

A bit off-topic, but I find that this biological developmental reality is something that is missing in the field of economics, whether Marxian or Neo-Libertarian. In simplest terms, the fact that the Individual Rational Actor and/or Surplus Labor is always and only created through Love. Although, I suppose this lapse is largely recognized when it is referred to as "the dismal science." This is also why the only marginally successful government experiment to halt declining birth-rates in a first world country was when a Scandanavian country (Sweden?) economically strong-arm-nudged a good deal of paternal involvement in very early child care. IOW, there's a strict limit to the extent you can "professionalize" care at Kegan 4, and there are also magnifying feedback mechanisms at play in caring vs. non-caring professions. For example, I felt more like a steely-eyed capitalist/free-wheeling libertarian when I was running a small business involving competitive trade with other able-bodied adults, and I felt more like a hugging-circle socialist when I was tutoring disadvantaged first graders, but both of these perspectives were equally rational. One of the eco-system-wide primary functions of the "feminine energy" is to facilitate the transfer of resources from the "masculine energy" to any "infants" in "her" care. And this is towards why too much "professionalism" at Kegan4 is killing the planet, and will eventually, as Marx long ago predicted (in spite of his too rigid thoughts about the relationship between Labor and Capital), bring an end to Capitalism, although not at all in the manner that Marx envisioned.

[karff]

With the current subject-object perspective scheme, my feedback loop comment would apply to the Stage 3 - Stage 4 transition. And, that doesn’t make sense. It makes more sense for the 2-3 transition. I think the subject-object perspective scheme should be slid down one step in relation to associated development stages.

Looking at current Stage 2, it makes some sense that they perceive others as objects, because they appear to treat people like objects. But it messes up the stages above and below.

Looking at current Stage 3, if the stage below are subjects that perceive only objects, then Stage 3 would perceive that everyone perceives them as an object. But Stage 3 has reciprocal relationships - “I view you as a subject, you view me as a subject.”

Looking at Stage 1, this is the stage where children “animate” the world, perceiving subjects everywhere. That does not make sense if the stage above is where only objects are perceived.

If the perspective scheme is slid down a step, Stage 2 now becomes where people perceive that other people are viewing them as objects. If you perceive that others will treat you like an object, you will react in kind (sociopathy). If you perceive that others perceive you as an object, you will display superficial traits, like an object (narssicism).